You have in your hands a new publication. POLITICO 28 will be an annual affair — our version of the “chapeau” or “hats-off” magazine in which we …

22

IVO BOSCAROL AND MATEVŽ LENARČIČ

SLOVENIA

THE ENGINEER AND THE EXPLORER

Luke Waller

Energy-efficient transport? Tesla and Silicon Valley come to mind first — not planes, and almost certainly not Slovenia.

Yet a couple of Slovenian dreamers are making low-carbon flight take off in a way that highlights this continent’s love of most things green and, perhaps the bigger surprise, sometimes muffled entrepreneurial vim.

Ivo Boscarol, founder of aircraft manufacturer Pipestrel, produces ultralight and electric planes. His old friend, photographer and extreme pilot Matevž Lenarčič, was the first in 2004 to fly solo around the world in an ultra-light aircraft — proving that low-carbon flight has a viable future.

In one of his missions Lenarcic used a Pipistrel aircraft to fly over the North Pole on a climate research mission. Why does he do it? Lenarčič doesn’t give much away. But he believes in Pipistrel’s ethos: Air travel has to be sustainable to have a future. “The secret of economic flights in aviation is design: low drag, a lot of lift and a very fuel-efficient engine. Pipistrel has all of this,” he says. Boscarol describes his friend as an environment-conscious adventurer with unassailable personal ethics. The pair is planning future projects. Their sense of adventure may turn out to be the catalyst low-carbon flight needs.

It’s been a long time coming. Boscoral spent his late twenties quietly tinkering with aircraft design in his workshop in Ajdovščina, a small Slovenian town near the Italian border. He trained as an economist in former Yugoslavia and started with a printing business. When he decided to buy a hang glider — flight always fascinated him — he found that it wasn’t built according to his “very high standards.” He modified and sold a new model to his friends. His ultra-light aircraft business grew from there.

Pipistrel became the first privately owned aviation business in the Balkans and, in 2007, the first in the world to bring a fully electric twin-seater aircraft onto the market. Equipped with a solar-powered trailer to allow the plane to recharge in storage, it was able to fly at 220 kilometers per hour for 600 kilometers, in silence. The Taurus G2 won the NASA Green Flight Challenge in 2011 and $1.3 million in prize money. “It’s a completely independent system with no impact on the environment,” says Boscarol.

Large competitors like Airbus have only developed prototype electric planes.

For all Boscarol’s achievements — Pipistrel was named most innovative company in the European Union in 2010 — he eludes the spotlight. “I can say that I have the best team in the world,” he says. Boscorol’s employees often leave work at 3.30 p.m. so they can spend time with their families. He could easily relocate his growing business to the States and likely reap the profit, but he says he doesn’t agree with American business values, which he believes disrespect workers and the environment. And in any case, business is doing fine. Pipistrel won a contract to supply the Indian Airforce with 194 planes in October.

Ivo Boscarol

Your advertising slogan for Europe. The rigidity of Europe is the biggest advantage of our competitors.

Which historical figure do you most admire?Nikola Tesla [the Serbian American engineer.]

What three things do you take with you everywhere you go?Any device to be connected to the Internet. Cash, I don’t like to work too much with plastic money. I don’t know …